Re: [PATCH, RFA] opcodes: Use autoconf to check for `bfd_mips_elf_get_abiflags' in BFD

["Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@linux-mips.org>]

On Tue, 27 Dec 2016, Joel Brobecker wrote:

> I haven't been able to figure out how distclean depends on
> CONFIG_STATUS_DEPENDENCIES, but I'm thiking it's probably one of
> the implicit dependencies. But looking at the automake documentation
> about CONFIG_STATUS_DEPENDENCIES, it looks like this is meant to be
> listing the depedencies to re-generate the Makefile. It don't think
> libbfd.a/la is in this category, is it?

 It is not, however `config.status' itself is, and with the change I made 
it depended on `libbfd.la' because one of the autoconf tests did.  So if 
e.g. you ran `configure' in opcodes/ first (for whatever reason), then 
running `make' there would run `configure' and then `make' in bfd/ because 
of other dependencies, however `config.status' would not get updated in 
opcodes/ afterwards, before its targets were made.

> I don't have a solution. Perhaps one way to approach the problem
> might be to distclean in the reverse order to configure/build?
> If opcodes depends on bfd and we distclean bfd, then there might
> indeed be some dependencies missing.
> 
> We need a solution fairly quickly...

 Thanks, Alan, for sorting this out in my absence!

 TBH I think `distclean' shouldn't really depend on non-phony targets in 
the first place, or at least it should ignore errors in their re-creation, 
but there you go.  With releases upcoming it's no time now to revamp our 
build system!

 Happy New Year!

  Maciej